1. Technical Field
This invention relates to apparatus, method and stored computer program media for managing “messages sent” files and/or resending of messages from mobile wireless communication devices.
2. Related Art
Various email systems are now well known and utilized by millions on a daily basis. Email systems typically maintain a stored file or folder containing current opened and unopened mail, previously sent mail, messages that have been “deleted” (e.g., in a “trash” file until also deleted therefrom), email address files for various categories of parties with whom communications have been made or may be made in the future (e.g., an “address book”) and the like. Sometimes email systems also incorporate calendar, personal contact data, documents, check lists and the like as well.
Besides composing new email messages and sending them, most systems also include features for forwarding received emails onward to other recipients and for resending previously sent messages (e.g., possibly retracting the earlier message in favor of a later version or possibly sending the same message on to additional recipients or possibly resending a message which for some reason went astray and was never acknowledged or actually received by the intended recipient.
Such email systems become considerably more complicated when they include mobile wireless communication devices as well as a user's base PC or enterprise message server or the like. In this more complex email system, a given email message may have originated at the user's desktop PC (or at somebody else's PC or otherwise) or may have originated in the first instance from the mobile wireless communication device itself. It is thus possible that the file of previously sent messages maintained in the mobile wireless communication device is not always synchronized (i.e., identical in content) with the file of previously sent messages for that particular user (in either the user's desktop PC base unit or a message server associated therewith for an entire enterprise). While synchronization of address books and the like between a user's PC base unit and a mobile PDA or the like has been known for some time, many if not all prior email systems incorporating mobile wireless communication devices have apparently not maintained well synchronized “message sent” files. Perhaps at least partially for such reasons, when a message is being resent from a user's mobile wireless communication device, it has heretofore typically involved resending of the entire message (e.g., the message header and message body text in full) from the mobile wireless communication device to an enterprise message server or the like (from which that particular message was then re-iterated to the same or new message recipients).
At the same time, typically such prior email systems incorporating mobile wireless communication devices have for a long time used a shortcut technique for effecting replies to received messages and/or forwarding of received messages from the mobile wireless communication device. In particular, since in such instances the received message must already be resident at the enterprise message server which sent it to the mobile wireless communication device, rather than including the entire received message text in a reply to or forwarding of that message, an abbreviated unique reference ID was instead transmitted back to the enterprise message server. This reference ID was then treated as a request to find the appropriate uniquely associated message and then to add the reply text thereto and send it onward and/or to forward the message (possibly also with additional added message text).
However, in spite of the fact that such shortcut techniques/protocols have been in existence for many years in this context for replying to and/or forwarding incoming messages from a mobile wireless communication device, it does not appear that analogous shortcut technique previously has been used for resending previously sent messages. In the past, when a message was resent from the mobile device, the entire contents of the message was sent from the device to the server. In some cases, particularly if there is not complete 100% current message syncing of the sent message files), not all previously sent message information (e.g., message body text) may be available at the mobile wireless communication device. However (particularly if synchronization of sent files is well maintained), then full message information for each previously sent message is likely to be already available at the server. Nevertheless, the prior art practice effectively has ignored this situation and required redundant message information to be sent across the wireless network which has been a waste of network—bandwidth and device battery.